ABSTRACT
This chapter explores various facets of rural residents' consumption patterns and how and why those patterns have changed in rural areas. Consumption has many faces: inputs used for production, needs for day-to-day living, preferences for leisure time, and confirmation of personal identity. Rural Americans often have to discard their garbage in their own backyards, with little opportunity for recycling. The material and symbolic components of American exceptionalism went hand in hand: the American Dream was only possible because of rising wages. As wages began to stagnate in the mid-1970s, households increased their indebtedness in an attempt to achieve the American Dream. The Archer family's trips to Central City Mall became typical of the changing consumption pattern of rural families in the latter part of the twentieth century, but in the decade of the 2010s malls are in trouble in both urban and rural areas.
